


Head in Sand

by stargatefan_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-10-06 13:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10335527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargatefan_archivist/pseuds/stargatefan_archivist
Summary: SPOILERS: Jolinar’s Memories, Forever in a Day, BloodlinesSG-1 utilise their own head-in-sand politics in their own ways.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Yuma, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [Stargatefan.com](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Stargatefan.com). To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [StargateFan Archive Collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/StargateFan_Archive_Collection).

Head in Sand

##  Head in Sand

##### Written by Elisabeth   
Comments? Write to me at [elisabeth_anna_99@yahoo.com](mailto:elisabeth_anna_99@yahoo.com)

  


"When is this honkin' mountain ever gonna end?!?" Jack yelled at the top of his lungs. The sound was all but lost to the howling wind. Teal'c frowned and wondered how a mountain ends. Tentatively he threw a look towards Daniel Jackson. 

"Daniel Jackson. How does a mountain 'end'?" he asked. 

"Jack means when we're gonna get to the summit Teal'c," he said, looking like he'd like to know the answer to that question himself. A sudden gust of wind, even stronger than the wind already blowing took him by surprise. If Teal'c hadn't been there to catch him, he was sure he'd have been blown away into oblivion, lost to the cruelty of the wind forever. As he mused about how poorly poetic the conditions were making him, he wondered how Sam did it, not get blown away. She weighed less then him, yet she didn't look as worried as he felt. For a moment he stopped and looked at her hunched figure, walking as briskly as possible. Perhaps she is more grounded than I am, Daniel theorised with a sense of jealousy and then went on reproving himself for the awful poetic quality his inner thoughts seemed to have acquired. 

It was so tempting to just stop. Just stand still for a moment or two. All four felt the need to, however only one felt the urgency to keep moving the strongest. 

Sam threw a most desperate look at what she was praying was the summit of the mountain. All kinds of thoughts flowed through her mind. 

She told herself not to think. Not to think at all because any and all thought would inevitably bring her back to the reality she was now in. It had been so long since she had thought those words. "Don't think." A number of occasions in the past crossed her mind. All of them felt so distant, so far away, another lifetime. 

The strongest memory was her mother's funeral. She, at that moment on the mountain, could have sworn she could smell all the flowers again. She had stood next to the grave, watched them lower the coffin while in her head she was screaming at herself not to think. Not to feel. Later. Later there would be time, space and privacy to feel everything, think about what was now her reality. Now there was no room for any of the anger, hurt and powerlessness she felt. So she pushed all the emotions down and ignored their lurking. Later. Later. 

If she stopped now, the way she knew the rest of team wanted to, they would all be confronted with their situation. And the last thing they needed was that. To stop would mean to die. So she hunched her shoulders even more and went on not thinking. 

All four struggled on. When they staggered over the edge they were hoping was the summit equal parts disappointment and wind nearly toppled them over. Like all the times before on this particular mountain, what they had thought was the summit was merely a long, flat plateau from which they could see the next climb facing them. Steadfastly they struggled on. 

* * *

Sam threw a look over her shoulder to check on the rest of the team. Everybody was fine, well as fine as they could be under the circumstances. She was struck by Teal'c's demeanour. In the past years she had, to some degree, learned to read the man. Something in his manner suggested something under the surface was troubling him. She wondered for a moment what it was. 

The next thing she observed in the Jaffa was that the wind was indeed so strong that it caused him some measure of discomfort. You're beginning to sound like him, Sam! she thought to herself as she shouldered the wind once more, somewhere deep inside she wished she had Teal'c's body so the wind wouldn't get to her as much. 

In all his years as first prime to Apophis he had not encountered these weather conditions, and certainly not for this measure of time. He had been on extremely cold planets, extremely hot planets, extremely wet planets and extremely dry planets but never had he been battered like this by the wind. Sure, physically he had been hurt thousands of times worse than this but somehow this was so hard. 

He struggled to keep his inner thoughts as stoic as he knew his face was. As a master in self-control surely he could restrain himself from thinking the things he didn't want to think about. He tried for some time to block out the memory swimming around deep down inside him. But somehow the desolateness of this place left him in some crucial way unable to keep his guard up strong enough. It was as if the memory had somehow taken over the strength of the wind outside of him and was utilising it to keep up a constant attack at the barrier he was so well trained to uphold. Finally he gave in to it. 

The memory he dreaded most was indeed the one closest to the surface. As he relived the memory he was struck by the fact that he could still smell the grass and forest of Chulak. He saw his son as he remembered him as he was the day before he left on his final mission with Apophis. He had been a child in every way possible. For his age he was small, one of the smallest in his training-class. His son's hand so tiny in his own huge hand. He still had that childlike quality so rare on Chulak. Soon he would lose it, as all the children born under Apophis' rule before him. The bright stars in Ry'ac's eyes would soon disappear under Apophis' harsh rule. Teal'c's heart wrenched as he remembered only a small fraction of the pain he had suffered. All in the name of the Almighty Apophis. His son, like his father, like all the generations before him, would lose the most important part of himself to the Almighty Apophis. These were the thoughts racing through his mind when he left his wife and son for the last time as first prime of Apophis. He would not see them again until he was a free man. 

If he had had a God, if he had known, that day, for sure what he had already suspected, he would have prayed that he would be able to stop Ry'ac from ever becoming a Jaffa. If only he had been strong enough to see Apophis for the false God that he was that day. All of this was hindsight. 

A particularly strong gust of wind knocked him out of his musing. He was glad of it. He knew that none of his team knew of the love for his child. They understood that love from their Tau'ri point of view. However, they could not possibly understand what his son meant to him. At times he had trouble comprehending how deep his emotions towards Ry'ac ran. Another gift from the Almighty Apophis. There was but one person that had made it past the training and the barrier Apophis had created in his first prime: Ry'ac. 

All four dragged themselves forward. Fatigue like they had only rarely experienced set in. None noticed the little flower growing in between two rocks, blossoming despite its harsh surrounding and climate. 

* * *

Teal'c looked at O'Neill's back. Teal'c observed him as he fought the wind. It was hard to guess the man's feelings. He had a barrier of his own. However, his barrier was something the Tau'ri called sarcasm. For only a moment Teal'c longed for a similar barrier and not his own hard, cold, rigid one. 

In rather unceremonious language Jack thought of the ways he hated this. He could handle climbing the mountain and he could handle the wind. But it was just the combination of the two at this particular moment that he didn't care for. That thought rang a bell. For a moment he wondered why it did. Then the memory came to him. As it hit him full-force he immediately tried to push it back down and as that failed he tried to hide from it, but it was no use. With nowhere left to turn he rode out the wave he was so expert in avoiding. 

Once again he found himself in the Iraqi prison in which most of his nightmares took place. Sounds penetrated his concentration but he ignored them, afraid that he would recognise them as coming from his own mouth. He had to focus. Focus on what? Just focus, mind over matter. Anything, just grab a memory and relive it, anything to not feel the pain. In his panic and confusion he seemed to have no memory at all. Suddenly, in his mind, he found himself at home, in his own house. Relieved he had found something to cling to he exhaled. The action was punished by a new wave of pain, administered by God-knew-who through God-knew-what-means. He ignored it and focussed. The memory was simple yet it brought him home for a lifesaving second. He registered Sara's smile and Charlie's baby-giggles. He could actually smell the baby-soap. Charlie splashed water all over his parents and laughed as he watched them wipe it off their face and clothes. A bubble escaped from the foam and rose. All three watched it until it burst in mid-air. At that moment he had passed out in the Iraqi prison and that brought him back to the present day and the mountain they were trying to climb. 

The memory within a memory confused him. He looked around to stop himself from seeing the other memory that was forcing its way up to his mind's eye. He looked at the faces of his team. It struck him that all three wore somewhat equal expressions. 

The fatigue had given way to dull acceptance in all four. They went on with the idea that every step took them one step closer to the summit, however far it may be. 

* * *

Daniel caught Jack's eye with his precarious swaying. The wind was getting to him. Keeping his balance seemed as much of a struggle as moving forward. Suddenly Jack realised the comparison between his last thought about Daniel and Daniel's life. After Sha're had been taken by the Goa'uld that was pretty much his state of mind. But still he had managed to survive that and miraculously even Sha're's death hadn't killed him. Not only that, but what made his personality so special had survived with him. If anything that part of him had gotten stronger. He could do nothing but respect and admire Daniel for that. If only he could have that kind of strength. 

For a moment Daniel allowed himself to admit that he really, deeply didn't like their current situation. For a little longer he allowed himself to ponder his dislike, then he forced himself to think about the bright side. It took him a while to come up with it. 'At least it it's not raining' was the best bright side he could come up with. 

There had been times on Abydos he wished for rain. He would have done pretty much anything for just a tiny little thunderstorm. Slowly he submerged himself in his own thoughts in order not to feel the wind and to forget his surroundings all together. His train of thought centred around thunderstorms for some reason. Suddenly a memory he had long forgotten surfaced. 

He was five, it was the day after his parents had died. He was in an orphanage. He was standing in front the window in a pair of pyjamas at least three sizes too big for him. He vaguely remembered that his mother had bought them for him to grow into. The lady who had put it on him hadn't even noticed they were too big. She had thirty more little boys to get into bed. He could even remember what her perfume smelled like, he didn't like it. Never before had he slept in the same room with so many children. It made him very uneasy. He kept on staring out of the window mesmerised by the thunderbolts and the rain. It never occurred to him to be scared. Some of the other boys were scared though. The one in the bed nearest the window had pulled the covers up over his head and was crying in few and far in between stifled sobs. 

Daniel tried to block out the sounds of the sobbing by looking out the window and concentrating on the thunder. It seemed like magic to him. He was so mesmerised that he could even pretend not to notice the tears now streaming down his own face. 

"Whaohooooo!" Jack yelled at the top of his lungs jerking Daniel out of his memory. Dazed he looked around to see what was making Jack so happy. 

Sam was grinning from ear to ear as Teal'c commented that the mountain indeed seemed to have ended. 

All four looked around the summit of the mountain to be confronted with an enormous splendour of flowers. All four were silent as a watery sun struggled its way through the clouds to glare at them in a most cheerful way. 

"Kids, you better get your sunblock out, looks like good weather is coming," Jack said, smiling. 

**~ The End ~**

* * *

>   
>  © August 2000 The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.  
> 

* * *

**Author's Note:** Written in a moment of depression and also as an exercise in writing things I am not necessarily comfortable with. 

* * *


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